Allianz Hurling League Division 1B
Antrim 0-11 Waterford 2-23

AS bad days go for Antrim's hurlers, this was up there as they were dominated from start to finish by Waterford at Corrigan Park on Sunday.

The 18-point margin of victory was very worthy for the Déise players who arrived in Belfast highly motivated and forewarned having escaped with a narrow victory at the same venue three years ago by the skin of their teeth.

Peter Queally's side has criticism ringing in their ears from their opening loss to Carlow and although they got past Laois the following day, there were still questions to answer and they did a good job of of it on Sunday as their biggest challenge seemed to be adapting to the conditions which they also mastered.

Playing with a heavy wind behind them in the opening period, they built a 16-point cushion at the break but at times it was all too easy for the Munster outfit who were going up against their former boss. They were leaving nothing to chance, bringing Conor Prunty, Stephen Bennett and Iarlaith Daly in, while Dessie Hutchinson and Jamie Barron were in fine form as all of Waterford's leaders stood up.

They dominated the breaks and ruled the skies, playing with an intensity Antrim didn't come close to matching and that was always going to add up to a difficult afternoon for Fitzgerald's Saffrons who had a decent enough spell either side of the break, but no more as positives were hard to find. 

"They got the breeze in the first half and their idea was to kill us early to knock our confidence and they did that, but they got too many easy scores," said Fitzgerald.

"When you're 16 down at half-time, you come out and do well for 10 minutes and get four or five scores - miss two or three more and when we did you could see our confidence drain, so it was survival mode until the end.

"I'm looking at myself, what we're doing in training and everything, but I've said from day one here that an issue is not fighting hard enough.

"I'm not going to give up on that. I'm going to stay with it and see if we can get it right, but I feel gutted for Antrim supporters and the people putting in hard work."

Playing with an extremely strong wind at their backs, Waterford immediately set about building a big lead and had two points on the board within the opening minute.

The lead was three with 10 played when they grabbed their first goal as a superb poc-out from Billy Nolan found Connor Prunty in stride with the ball worked to Kevin Mahony to crack home.

Their second major came six minutes later and from a Stephen Bennett penalty, awarded as he was adjudged to have been clipped outside the area, but deemed a goalscoring opportunity denied and Keelan Molloy would spend 10 minutes in the sin-bin to compound matters.

The scores flowed for Waterford with Jamie Barron and Dessie Hutchinson hitting some beauties, as Antrim only had a couple of James McNaughton frees to show until late in the half when Seaan Elliott had a sight of goal but shot over, yet it was the visitors with a commanding 2-14 to 0-4 lead.

Antrim made a decent start to the second period with the first four points including one from substitute Eoin O'Neill and a beauty by Molloy, but were unable to sustain the momentum with Waterford adapting to playing into the gale, rattling off four of their own to restore to 16-point gap going into the final quarter.

They could have had a third goal only for the crossbar denying Hutchinson, but the game was long decided and petered out late with Waterford home and hosed.

Dessie Hutchinson works his way towards goal
2Gallery

Dessie Hutchinson works his way towards goal

"How we're training and playing is completely different," Fitzgerald insists.

"I'm devastated as I don't want to be losing any games, so I'm going to try everything to sort it out.

"You shouldn't be beaten by 16 or 18 points. I know Waterford were on song today and wanted to give me a message, which they did.

"It was one-sided. If you see us training, it's absolutely savage, so this is a psychological thing and I know if I look at our GPS, it will be way down. If you're way down in what you can do, that's psychological more than physical.

"I am just frustrated as I want to make a difference. I'm not coming up here for the craic, so we either accept it or make a decision. I'm ready to fight again on Tuesday night (in training).

"I said it's going to get worse before it gets better because they have been giving up on games way before this and we have to get that sorted.

"When we are on song, we're good. But when they got the goals, you could see the confidence drain out of them, so there is work to be done on that."

ANTRIM: R Elliott; E McFerran, R McCloskey, S Rooney; J Maskey, E Campbell, C Bohill; N Elliott, S Elliott (0-1); P Boyle, R McCambridge, K Molloy (0-2); J McLaughlin, J McNaughton (0-6, 6f), N O'Connor.
Subs: E O'Neill (0-1) for S Elliott (HT), C McKeown for P Boyle (49), A McGarry for J McLaughlin (58), G Walsh (0-1f) for K Molloy (60), K Molloy for R McCambridge (62).
Black card: K Molloy (16-26)

WATERFORD: B Nolan; C Ryan, C Prunty (0-2), I Daly; M Kiely (0-1), M Fitzgerald (0-1), P Leavey; J Prendergast, C Sheahan; Padraig Fitzgerald (0-4, 3f), J Barron (0-3), C Treen (0-2); K Mahony (1-0), Stephen Bennett (1-3, 1-0 pen, 0-1f), D Hutchinson (0-4).
Subs: K Bennett (0-1) for Padraig Fitzgerald (44), P Hogan (0-1) for J Pendergast (44), P Curran (0-1f) for C Treen (62), S Walsh for S Bennett (65), G Fives for C Prunty (67)

REFEREE: C Flynn (Westmeath)